


scars feel like knives, they tell us why we're fighting

by notavodkashot



Series: words are futile devices [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Best Friends, Child Soldiers, Dubious Morality, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Murder, War is never anything but fucking horrifying, body disposal, grey morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 00:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16821283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: Everything comes with a price; that was the greatest wisdom Mors ever taught Cor.





	scars feel like knives, they tell us why we're fighting

It was disturbing, how easily he fell into his new role, serving the King. He’d resented the strict structure of the Crownsguard, his first time joining it, and he’d expected more of the same this time around. That wasn’t what he got. 

He got Mors’ occasional bursts of stubbornness and sudden impulses that threw the entire retinue into a frenzy to somehow land on their feet when the King decided on an entirely different course of action than what they were expecting. He got Lucius sucking at his little metal flask morning, noon and night, sighing loudly and going about making sure the King’s every demand was met, albeit a lot more grudgingly that Cor had always imagined a King would tolerate. He got Lyra and her loud, chortling laughter, utterly undignified and unrepentant, eyes bright and manic as she went about her business with chipped paint on her nails and a rifle about as long as she was tall. 

Mostly, he got Aulea, who was sharp and sly and ruthless in a way that soothed his frayed nerves, and anchored him into the big, gaping maw of reality, even at the height of everything going to shit. 

“Are you done yet?” Cor asked, kicking dirt with the heel of his left foot, hands stuck in the pockets of his pants. 

“I’ll be done when I’m done,” Aulea snarled back, from behind the bush she’d chosen for privacy. “Shut up.” 

“Periods are stupid,” Cor sighed, listening for the rustle of clothes and leaves, carefully making sure not to look. 

She pinched him, when he looked, even if he wasn’t looking at her. Her nails were sharp despite the chipped paint Lyra had put there, and she never let go until her fingers were wet with blood and he had another little wound to fester and itch, for days. 

“Your face is stupid,” Aulea said, as she walked back out, tugging at the hem of her pants. “Are you ready?” 

“Mm,” Cor replied, shrugging. 

Aulea rolled her eyes. 

“Good enough, I guess.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist and squinted at him. “We’ve got work to do.” 

“ _We_ sounds like a crowd,” Cor muttered snidely, lazily matching her stride as they made their way deeper into the woods. 

“I’m doing more than 20% of the work so I deserve at least half of the credit,” Aulea retorted wisely, in the same sing-song fast talking that her father used whenever he smiled too wide and made Mors splutter and laugh. 

“That’s not how math works,” Cor insisted, squinting suspiciously at her – he was good at squinting, Mors said he had a good face for it, so he indulged in it without shame – and then offered her a hand to hop down the slope curving gently around the dirt road they were following, which she ignored anyway, because she hated nothing more than being helped, and he knew it. 

“I’m not taking critiques about what is and isn’t math from an idiot who can’t multiply by seven without having a meltdown.” 

Cor squinted some more, and viscerally refused to be embarrassed. 

“Seven is an objectively stupid number.” 

Aulea ran a hand over her hair, pushing the bangs out of her face, and snorted mercilessly. 

“As is your face, yes. We’ve been here before, Cor, don’t be a bore.” 

“Hn,” Cor said, because he knew he was beat – he’d known before he started, because he’d never seen anyone win an argument with Aulea, ever, but he still had to try, if only for pride’s sake – and he wasn’t in the mood to humble himself more than he already had. “Who’s dying today?” 

He very clearly never asked who he was killing today, at least not anymore. It was the first lesson Lucius had taught him, upon joining the King’s retinue – the King’s inner circle, even – that it was crass to call murder by name, when they were conveniently at war. And everyone knew many terrible things happened during a war, it was just the nature of things. You couldn’t blame war for being war, it was just the way things went. 

Aulea stared up at the sky, purplish grey as night settled in, and sighed. 

“Lots of people,” she snorted, looking sideways at him with that half smirk of hers that Cor swore was sharper than any of Gilgamesh’s thousand blades. “But we’re only offering burial services for one. Marcel Ithaka.” 

“He’s Crownsguard,” Cor pointed out, frowning. “Runs Saxham last I heard.” 

“Runs it a little too well for Father’s taste,” Aulea replied, shrugging. “He’s been making trade… complicated, and Father Dearest has merch to ship from Lestallum to Caem. Clients can’t very well wait, after all.” She grimaced. “Called it a personal favor, when he asked the King.” 

Somewhere in the back of his head, Cor thought it was unworthy to kill a man purely because he was good at the job he’d been tasked with. Ithaka sounded like a perfectly likable man, from what he’d heard of him around camp: soldiers wistfully hoping to be sent to his regiment, to be promised shelter and three warm meals a day and no fucking Niflheim tin cans to ruin their days. He’d never met the man, of course, but that didn’t mean he automatically deserved what they were going to do to him. 

Then again, Cor no longer killed at his leisure. His sword did not belong to himself and he no longer chose his own marks. He’d bowed to the King and received his favor, and he knew what that meant. 

“You’re upset,” he pointed out, watching Aulea walk across the knee-high mud with a determined stride, back too tense to keep her balance as fluid as it usually was. 

“I forget, sometimes,” she said, as they reached the edge of the woods that spread out into the plains, that bloomed into farmland far down below, “that my Father is who he is, and not who he claims he is, when he calls himself a war hero.” 

“So, he’s an asshole,” Cor summarized, with the blunt grace of a rampaging garulessa, “he’s him and you’re you.” 

It sounded stupid when he said it out loud, which was why he so rarely indulged in voicing his feelings or thoughts, they were always crisper and more poignant before he muddled them up with words. But the sentiment was quite sincere, regardless. Aulea was blunt and rude and an absolute nightmare as far as he was concerned, but she was fundamentally a decent sort of person. Mostly. 

She stuffed candy in his pockets and kept stitching him up even after she swore never to do it again, each time. 

“You’re lucky your parents are dead,” she said, vicious and cutting, the sort of cold that sneaked in and punched his lungs and made it hard to breathe, and then stared down at him when he missed his step and ended up smearing his pants up to his thigh on mud. “They can’t disappoint you anymore.” 

Cor thought of the charred remains of his home, even if he didn’t want to – he never wanted to – and said nothing at all. He wanted to be angry at her, and then got angry at himself, when he realized, yet again, that he couldn’t. 

He ended up curled up against her side, in front of the fire, sullen but unable to escape the fact his chin hooked perfectly on her shoulder. 

* * *

“You can stay here,” Cor said, two days later, after they were done crossing the plains – the long way around – and the outpost was visible in the distance. “I’ll just- “ 

“No,” Aulea said, and didn’t bother to deign look at him when she spoke. “You’re shit at subtle anyway.” 

“You’re shit at killing,” Cor retorted, a snide, mutinous mutter caught between his teeth, because he knew arguing was pointless, but it still bit him to give in without a fight. 

Sometimes he imagined himself standing up for himself and reminding her he belonged to the King, not to her. He never quite got it right enough to muster up the nerve and try. 

Aulea ignored him – she heard him, of course she did, she always listened to him, and maybe that was why he went along with every single ridiculous thing she came up with – and strolled up the settlement with an entirely different gaunt. They were standing before Marcel Ithaka in less than twenty minutes, being offered warm food and a place to stay, even before Aulea finished spinning her tale. 

Cor didn’t eat the food – he didn’t eat anything he didn’t kill himself, on principle, but there was a superstitious weight in his blood that made his stomach rebel at the thought of accepting hospitality from a man he was meant to kill – but Aulea dug in with zeal that backed up her story. Ithaka agreed to investigate the place their parents got taken – Cor knew the shape of the slight behind the story, but not the true meaning of it, after his last spat with her, he could almost smell the disdain aimed at him for it – and spoke warmly to them all the way there. 

Cor’s sword slid into his back cleanly, angled just right to slip between the ribs and burst his heart like an overripe boil. One moment he was talking about finding them a place to stay, if they wanted it, and then he gurgled and died. Cor pulled his sword back and realized Aulea was staring at the corpse as it crumpled to the ground, eyes unseeing. 

“We’re just following orders,” Cor told her, the well-worn wisdom of killers let loose at war. “Lea.” 

“Soldiers follow orders,” Aulea snarled, and dropped to her knees, razor in hand, ready to do her part and disfigure the body beyond recognition. “We’re not soldiers.” 

Cor watched the way her hand didn’t tremble, even a little, and then dropped his eyes to his shoes, caked with mud and blood from a thousand deaths. 

“I know.” 

* * *

“I still think you’re you,” Cor said, as they sat atop the slight bump of a freshly finished grave, looking up at the stars above their heads. 

The Wall glimmered faintly above, translucent film meant to protect them from everything, except themselves. Cor wondered, sometimes, what the sky looked like, without it in the way, and knew it would be omen of terrible things, if he ever found out. 

“I should hope so, yes,” Aulea muttered, running her nails along the wet dirt, leaving grooves behind them. 

“You’re not a good person,” Cor went on, clutching his sword to his chest, knees up to his chin as he stared at his feet. “But I still like who you are.” He shrugged. “Sometimes.” 

“Well, that makes one of us,” she replied, laughing even as she hid her face under her hair. “At least sometimes.” 

“It’s just, I think…” he began, and stopped, and chewed on his tongue, because words were hard and stupid and never exactly what he needed, to say what he meant. “I think you keep wanting to be someone you’re not made to be and that’s why it never feels right.” He frowned. “You’re not made for killing.” 

“No one is made for killing, Cor,” Aulea whispered, sighed, and gave up pretenses, pulling out a squished, damp pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She’d stolen them from Ithaka, Cor realized, and his stomach made a roll for reasons he knew words would never be able to articulate. “You just have to stop being a fucking coward and start practicing. Practice makes perfect.” 

“But you don’t have to,” Cor insisted, watching her lips curl around the cigarette with a frown. He much liked it better when her lips were wrapped around something sweet, instead. And the smoke made his eyes hurt, somewhat. “I’m here, so you don’t have to.” 

Aulea let out a cloud of smoke above their heads and stared up at the sky. 

“You’re not going to be here forever,” she said, “no one is. Better people than you and me, they get murdered for no other reason than they make assholes like my Father lose their profit margin. Got no one to rely on but yourself. I know that. I just… I hate what we do, and I hate why we do it and I don’t know how to stop.” 

“When the war stops,” Cor said, looking down as he traced the little ridges her fingers left on the dirt with his own, “we’ll stop.” 

“We’re not soldiers,” Aulea whispered, “they might never take the war away from us. They’ll call it something else, but we’re still going to be doing it anyway. We’re assets. Tools. You don’t stop using a tool, just because one task is done. You figure out a new way to use it, or you throw it away. My Father has done nothing if not taught me that well enough.” 

“You can’t hammer with a saw, though,” Cor insisted, and stared at his hand as hers slid into it, fingers curling around each other. “So maybe it’s okay, that you’re not good at killing. Means there’s something else you’re good at.” 

“I’d rather be good at this, than what I could be good for,” Aulea said tersely, shrapnel in her vowels, though Cor didn’t quite grasp their meaning. 

It scared him, that he didn’t, and he could see how much she hated whatever it was. It scared him and made him angry. 

“It’s stupid anyway,” she snapped, throwing the still lit and mostly unsmoked cigarette away and then standing up forcefully. “Hypocritical. We’ve done this song and dance how many times now? And I start caring now because he didn’t fit the list of qualifiers, that I made up to make myself stop throwing up about this kind of thing.” 

Cor stared and stared and tried to conjure words that made sense. That made things better. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Aulea stared right back at him, and he was struck again, by how much it felt like it was his own eyes, staring right back at him, when she did. 

“I’m not,” she said, swallowing hard. “We just killed a perfectly decent man that had no business dying the way he did. And I’m not sorry. Not for him. I’m angry, because I know the sort of man my father is, and the sort of person he’s made me into. And I let him. I let him do it to me, and I let him do it to you, too.” 

“I was a murderer for a long time before I met your father,” Cor replied, and uncurled himself from the ground, standing up slowly as he looked up at her. “I’m sorry. For him,” he said, nodding at the ground, “and for you.” 

Half of his face lit up in pain when her palm hit his cheek. She was stronger than she looked. Smarter. But mostly stronger. Cor licked his split lip and looked up at her, expectant. 

“We’re not doing this again,” she said, clenching and unclenching her fist, as if echoing the throbbing on Cor’s skin from the slap. “Not like this.” 

Cor swallowed hard. 

“Okay.” 

* * *

“Why?” Cor asked, when the question would not stay behind his teeth any longer. 

The King looked up from the lure he was threading – he threaded lures when he was angry or tense or just bored, Cor knew it bode well for no one, when the rusty metal box with the infinite supply of shiny trinkets and feathers came out of the armiger – and squinted at him. Mors was a much better squinter than Cor, mostly because he had forty years and change of practice on his side, over Cor’s own attempts. Cor peered at his hands – Mors’ hands were the least kingly hands Cor had ever seen: they were leathery and wrinkled and darkened with sun spots and bulging veins – rather than his King’s face, if only because he still couldn’t look at the slate eyes without feeling them peeling away layers off his soul. 

“It’s not my place,” Cor recited, word for word, in the same tone Lucius had taken pains to teach him, though he couldn’t quite hide the sullenness behind them. 

“Undoubtedly,” Mors said, tone dry, “but Luca isn’t here to get constipated about it. Spit it out, boy.” 

Cor always measured his words carefully, when it came to the King. Mors was not a monster, not the likes he’d heard rumors of. But Mors was sharp and sly, and he liked to poke holes at Cor, with his own words, and they were the kind that didn’t bleed and Aulea didn’t know how to stitch up close afterwards. 

Still, Cor served him, and it didn’t chafe him too much to do it. 

“Ithaka,” he said, after due consideration, because at least Mors always allowed him enough time to choose carefully the tools of his own demise. 

Mors didn’t flinch. Didn’t startle. He went right on threading beads into transparent wire and tying it off with a knot. 

“Yes,” he said, as he inspected his handiwork. “I was wondering when you were going to ask about that.” Mors snorted. “Tristan says his girl was spitting fire at his ankles for it, the day after.” He put down the lure and picked up a new, bare one, ready to begin the process again. “You didn’t. I appreciate the lack of backstabbing and or spitting involved.” 

“I- “ 

Cor made the mistake to look up. Mors stared down at him, eyes sunken in and wary, but every bit as sharp as the edge of his own blade. Cor often felt, standing before his King, like a child. He ought to loathe that feeling, rightfully hated it in every other circumstance. But when Mors stared him down, somewhere deep in the back of his brain, somewhere primal and wordless, stood to attention and waited. 

Waited. 

“Ithaka did not deserve what you two did to him,” Mors said, and continued to pin Cor in place with his eyes, even as he began to wrap wire around the loop of the lure, fingers moving confidently, with practice. “He was a good man. Shit ass soldier, but a good man. Good with numbers and people. I sent him to Saxham precisely because of that. Figured he’d get that glaring, primary target secured and halfway sheltered properly.” Mors stared at Cor, as if making sure he was listening – how could he not be listening – before he continued. “I put him there. I miscalculated. I knew he would secure the farms. I did not think about him securing them so well as to close off Tristan’s railroad.” Mors did not blink. Or maybe he blinked at the exact same time Cor did. Either way, he did not look away. “So, when I was informed of my gross miscalculation, there was nothing to it, but getting it fixed.” 

Cor swallowed hard. 

“Why.” 

Mors kept on staring, unwavering, unflinching. 

“Because Tristan and his railroad are the only reason Lestallum is still standing,” Mors replied, painfully matter-of-fact, not a shade of emotion clouding the steel in his voice. “Lestallum is two hundred and fifty thousand people, hiding in behind their walls, and seven million, depending on their power grid. I reckon you can do the math.” 

Cor was rather poor at math, admittedly, but he understood. The shape if not the nuance of it. 

“You don’t like him very much,” Cor guessed, lips twitching, “do you?” 

“He’s my oldest, dearest friend,” Mors replied, eyebrows arched. “Of course I despise the pustulant sack of shit, he reminds me of every terrible choice I’ve ever made in my life.” He snorted. “One day, you’ll be old enough to hate your best friends, and still murder for their sake.” 

Cor thought of Aulea and her pursed lips and the way she knew how to smile at people and make them forget what they were doing in the first place. 

“Send me alone,” Cor said, after a moment, less a request and more a demand, and he could imagine Lucius writhing in outrage at the idea. It made him smile a grimace as the King arched an eyebrow down at him. “Next time.” Cor nodded solemnly. “Send me alone.” 

But he did not, in fact, doubt that there would be a next time. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


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